The other month, I attended a meeting for USEPA Region 2, which includes New Jersey, New York, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Driving up the Turnpike, I wasn't expecting much excitement. Generally these meetings cover federal drinking water policy and it can be a struggle to pay attention, especially if the lecturer is covering a topic you don't deal with in your section. Our lab usually sends a few representatives, one or two from each section, metals, radiochemistry, bacteriology, and chemistry. 

The EPA Region 2 campus is located in Edison, NJ in a converted World War I military base. A black iron fence surrounds the compound and it is barely noticeable as an EPA facility from the roadway. The squat brick buildings are old on the outside, but modern and clean, in a governmental and efficient way on the inside.

Before the meeting started, we were all chatting, getting to know the other attendees. My associate and I were seated behind the representatives from the designated laboratories in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. At one point, the owner of the lab in the Virgin Islands turned around and said she needed chemists and asked who would like to come work in her lab. Five of us from New Jersey shot our hands in the air. But at the end of the meeting, I was the only one to give her my e-mail and information.

Arriving home, I told my husband about my encounter. How she had asked me how I would like living on a boat and I told her it's always been a dream of mine to live on a boat. She related how her last hire came down and came to hate living on a boat and disappeared back to the mainland.  My husband said it sounded good. He was looking at being laid off in the coming weeks and his work had already been cut back. He works in construction, specifically high-end home remodeling and the company he works for simply ran out of work

Two weeks later, I got an e-mail from St. Thomas requesting my resume and information. My heart was pounding and visions of sand and palm trees were dancing in my head. I sent her my resume and transcripts from college. She wrote back that I was overqualified and I nearly fainted, but kept reading. She wanted me anyway and wanted to create a position for me. It was hard, she said, to find chemists on the Virgin Islands. 

Over the last few weeks, we've been e-mailing back and forth. She wants to set up an interview in July and come up with a package to offer me. My husband is now laid off and I started a business to try to keep up with the bills. So now I work two jobs here and have the prospect of an unemployed husband, mounting bills and work, work, work.

Or I can take a job in St. Thomas, sell the house and most of my belongings, buy a boat and live a simple life in a tropical island. 

Part of my concern is that my son will not receive an adequate education. Most likely, I will have to home school him because the public education system there has been called "abysmal" by the laboratory owner and school officials I contacted. Montessori School is offering to collaborate with me if I choose home schooling. I can send my son to some of their classes and programs. But they don't have much in the way of assistance to the visually impaired. His current school could also be described as "abysmal", they have caused my whole head to go grey over the last 9 years, but that's a different post.

For years, I have been praying to get out of New Jersey. I'm a Virginian, from the Tidewater area, and have no business shoveling snow.  I can't stand freezing my ass each winter and hate the way the cold just creeps through the uninsulated walls of my 150 year old house. I don't like the hurry, hurry and the nasally accents. Some of the radio announcers talk like they have a mouth full of marbles and it hurts my ears. Overall, my experience here has been beneficial and I've made many friends and met many good people. But I've never had a sense of belonging.

I want to be where it is warm. I love my job here, but with my husband unemployed and me essentially working two jobs, I can't see this situation lasting too much longer. I am very stressed. It's been a long time since I've written anything here because all my time at home was consumed with my business, my second job. I don't want to work for the sake of working, working just to get by. A consolidation sounds good right about now.

 From the time I was small, I dreamed of living in the tropics. At one point, I wanted to be a pirate. I feel a closeness to and an affinity for the water which is why I probably ended up in a water testing laboratory. If I take this job, I will miss the people I have met here, but something in my heart tells me it is time to move on. I have nothing more to gain or give here. Admittedly, it is a change that is approaching with fearsome speed. I could be gone and living a whole new life by the new year. Deep down, I know it is going to be an adventure I won't regret. 

There is something refreshing about the idea of getting rid of all of my material belongings and going to a beautiful place to live a simple life doing what I love.